Working with shadow buffers, trying to get as close to realism without heavy rendertime... The eyes are fixed by a shader cheat (I'll have to do similar with teeth and mouth)....

I was feeling too lazy to pant the inside of the nostrils, so I tried a negative light. :bug: which I never used before... And it is not what I expected..., or rather using it was like trying to pedal the the steampunk wombledybat zepplin backwards in high heels.... :ahhh: But neg-light effect when heavy was kind of nice and dramatic... Would be great for illustration...

I've been going cross-eyed playing around with the toon renderer and shaders included with Carrara. I found as many have that using the YaToon lighting model in the shaders works best with using a high ambient light and doesn't seem to work with scene lights. I didn't like the look much. I tend to like the toon look where there are more dramatic shadows. This image I used the toon effect in the scene settings and modified some shaders to achieve a flatter look to the skin. I also exaggerated the highlights and used the glare effect as well as some post work to get a DOF.

I LOVE the highlight you got on the dress from YaToon...
but I agree that I never understood all the apparent(?) controls in Yatoon, some just don't seem to react with the lights at all...

With my own shadow problems I think I finally got two negative bulbs shoved up M3's nostrils... and set to the appropriate distance after 70+ test renders since the spot render tool is busted in the current C8.5 beta)... I can't tell if my main negative light is making everything look noisy or if it is just bringing out extreme details in my skin texture... Eitherway I like the way it looks (gritty, grainy) but I don't know if I can animate with that, it might just turn to noisey sparkle mush.... (click for bigger)

A "Negative Light" is simply a switch on the light panel that makes its rays subtract from the scene rather than add, so it's just a simple math function as far as the render is concerned, not a special magic tool that reduces light in a given area realistically - like a "sphere of influence".... Also the negative light needs to be the multiplier of all the lights it will hit, I think... A negative light needs to be at 200% "brightness" to cancel out 2 regular lights at 100% brightness....Now consider that a negative light can use shadow buffers, soft shadows, or not cast shadows, and it just gets weirder.... I'm not sure what I thought negative lights would be, but now that I'm using them I can see why they were never considered important enough in the past. They are somewhat awkward to use. and require a LOT of trial and error. Even just casting on a flat plane didn't give the results I expected... there are actually dark highights depending on the specularity of the shader....

Interesting info. about the negative lights. They do sound kind of awkward.

Regarding my toon image, I decided not tom use YaToon for the dress (or any of it really) because I wasn't getting any specular effect. I eventually dropped it as well from the skin and hair. Interestingly, I did get a better effect if I went with plain flat colors with the scene's toon effect. The gloves and hair for instance looked really nice. The skin seemed to work better without the YaToon lighting model in the shader as well. I just cranked up the highlight and shininess.

It's been a while since I last visited here, good to see things haven't really changed all that much.

Let's see if I can figure out how to post a render, nothing too special: (I hope it isn't too disturbing, lol.)

Nicely done! Glad to see you're back.

FYI, the maximum image size is 2000x2000 pixels and is limited to several megabytes. So far I've uploaded .png and Jpegs. The PITA part is having to update your posts to upload more than one image per post. Makes posting screen shots and tutorials a bit awkward.

Harry always knew that he and Ralph had something in common. Not only were they born on the same day, in the same hospital and to the same parents, they both (later in life at least) shopped for their clothes at the same snappy Barnaby Street Shoppe.

But it wasn't till one Saturday afternoon in late August 1999 that Ralph, the younger but vainer of the two, accidently used too much vanishing cream on his wrinkles.

Tragically, when he realised his mistake, he only rubbed harder.

This, as you can see, not only made things worse, but it made things worser, worsest... and finally, worserest.

I know (a New Hope/Star wars/Han Solo) but
is the Millenium falcon like the Millenium cat, the Millenium dog, Millenium woman, man and cow (oops not the last unfortunately for Sockratease)?
does the LE version just sit on its handler's glove like a dead parrot?

Harry always knew that he and Ralph had something in common. Not only were they born on the same day, in the same hospital and to the same parents, they both (later in life at least) shopped for their clothes at the same snappy Barnaby Street Shoppe.

But it wasn't till one Saturday afternoon in late August 1999 that Ralph, the younger but vainer of the two, accidently used too much vanishing cream on his wrinkles.

Tragically, when he realised his mistake, he only rubbed harder.

This, as you can see, not only made things worse, but it made things worser, worsest... and finally, worserest.